Thermal imaging cameras are used in a variety of situations. For example, thermal imaging cameras are often used during maintenance inspections to thermally inspect equipment. Example equipment may include rotating machinery, electrical panels, or rows of circuit breakers, among other types of equipment. Thermal inspections can detect equipment hot spots such as overheating machinery or electrical components, helping to ensure timely repair or replacement of the overheating equipment before a more significant problem develops.
Depending on the configuration of the camera, the thermal imaging camera may also generate a visible light image of the same object. The camera may display the infrared image and the visible light image in a coordinated manner, for example, to help an operator interpret the thermal image generated by the thermal imaging camera. Unlike visible light images which generally provide good contrast between different objects, it is often difficult to recognize and distinguish different features in a thermal image as compared to the real-world scene. For this reason, an operator may rely on a visible light image to help interpret and focus the thermal image.
In some situations, the thermal imaging camera may need to monitor a machine or process for lengthy periods of time. For example, it might be desirable to continuously monitor equipment or other objects for temperature changes, but such changes may occur only infrequently and/or very gradually and slowly. While such changes can be detected by continuous monitoring, such continuous monitoring over the long periods of time needed to detect the temperature changes consumes large amounts of memory as well as power, limiting the capacity of the thermal imaging camera.